Natuna 15

The Burning Meadow

The meadow was on fire. Flames started abruptly, anywhere, in various patches. Their color wasn’t yellow, it was white. The meadow had several stones laid down on it, forming a path and a small sitting area. Flames would form on the grass between the stones, but never on the stones themselves. The sky was dark, and everything was tinted in blue.

I ran as fast as I could, collecting my items scattered across the grass. The grass was green, bluish green with the light, but yet I thought to myself, “This may be an event of spontaneous combustion considering how dry the plants are.” I picked up my laptop cable which was already in a small flame. I panically tried to extinguish it by tapping the cable to the ground. “I hope it’s not broken,” I said to myself. I couldn’t find my laptop.

Suddenly I noticed a soldier in the viccinity. That soldier again, I had met him before. His uniform indicated he was a World War II soldier. The soldier was going to a log cabin that protruded from the hill. The door was large and round, and it had red and blue checkered pattern on it. The soldier knocked the door hardly, but nothing happened. It stayed shut. Somehow I knew, he was looking for his lover.

The log was above my level area. So there was nothing I could do. I wasn’t permitted to go inside yet. To open it, one had to acquire the key from the gnomes who lived in the next cabin. The cabin was just like the first, but less colorful. It was the cabin I was headed to, all running and panicking. I wanted to put my burned items there before I searched for more.

The soldier had to know that the gnomes in my cabin held the key, because after failing, he went straight to it. He arrived before I did, and knocked the round door hardly. It opened, and showed that its inside was divided into two levels, a higher half of circle and a lower one. A gnome was standing on the higher half. To my surprise, he was large, maybe even larger than me. He’s just shaped like an ordinary gnome. He wore long pants with straps and a shirt with long sleeves and vertical stripes. His clothes looked old, and they looked like something a lumberjack would wear in children’s stories.

The gnome parted his mouth but didn’t produce any sound. Perhaps he was about to say something to the new guest before the soldier stopped him. The soldier had pulled out his small caliber gun and put it up, right in front of the gnome’s face. “Where is the crystal key?” he asked. “I need to find my girl!”

-April 18th, 2015-

Love Me Hardly

In the light of Fifty Shades of Grey movie coming out, I had a talk about sadomasochism with a girl-friend. She had a thing with sadomasochism videos and I wanted to know what the practice truly meant, at least for her. The only thing I knew at the time was that it meant a love for inflicting/receiving pain in a sexual activity. However, what she revealed next got me thinking.

A Best Man's Speech

Since I believe it is customary for the best man to say something about the bride and groom, even when the matrimony was already done five days ago, I will still do it... in writing of course.

So here it goes.

I have known the groom for twelve years now, and for the first several years, I honestly thought that he was actually a robot. All I saw was that he had limited sets of mood, which were friendly and even friendlier. Never did he show another hint of emotions. This inhumane quality plus the fact that he never showed any extra excitement when encountering members of the different sex put me to believe that he was deprived of any organic tissue.

This view had a slight change when the robot had what can be argued as a relationship with female Homo sapiens. However, it was quickly transpired that although he showed a degree of fleshy interest for women, he lacked what a real human had, which was a heart that could feel. He was as cold as the Lich King’s throne. This was also made worse by his deeply analytical mind and his strong tendency to weigh and evaluate, probably stemming from the ray of his celestial sign, Libra. He had complaints for every female that had the unfortunate opportunity of falling in love with him. Mind you, the robot was not a handsome contraption. His head was eerily almost a perfect sphere, yet this did not stop him from finding more and more dissatisfaction about his partners.

Things took for a drastic turn, however, when a female Homo sapiens, simply called Angie, entered the robot’s life. The robot was finally dazzled, his complaints reduced to almost nothing. She also got him, the creature whose primary directive regarding women seemed to be fight or flight, to want to spend the rest of his life with her. As incredible as it sounds, I can say that I was at the very least surprised about this. Angie was beautiful, kind, smart, and caring with a hint of Thatcher persona. No wonder the robot stopped searching.

So there it was... the robot and his human female counterpart.
But, my story is not yet finished.

When the priest who led their holy matrimony asked Angie what she thought was the robot’s not-so-desired trait, she answered, “His insensitivity.” Knowing the robot’s history I couldn’t agree more. However, what happened next got me wondering. The fact that the robot constantly produced serous secretions from the corners of his eyes during mass posed several questions for me. First, “Does the robot really possess lacrimal glands?” And second, “Is the robot really a heartless bastard?” But, the answer came to me faster than he could mutter, “I do.” Perhaps, he was not a robot for a long time anymore. Perhaps he was then already a simple human being. Perhaps, he had found, in all intents and purposes, his long lost heart.
It was Angie all the time.

So there it was... the groom and the bride, the heart of his life.

Metaphors aside, I’ve always believed that marriage is a constant struggle. So, if someone were to ask me whether the bride and groom would face hardships, I would surely answer, “Of course.”
Marriage is hard work. It requires strong partnership, trust, humility, loyalty, and a whole lot of love. It’s always hard to bring two different personalities under one roof, let alone for a lifetime.

But metaphors aside, if someone were to ask me whether I had the slightest doubt if they could make it, I would faithfully say, “Hell no.”
This is Ivan and Angie we’re talking about, the dynamic pediatrician duo with friends and contacts more than the population of any small town in East Borneo. It’s the best complementing, highly spirited, and loving team you can get. I have faith in them as much as I have faith in Jesse and Celine from Before Sunrise, and coming from me, you know it’s special.

So here is to the bride and groom.
May the Lord Almighty, bless them with an ever growing friendship, love, joy, and all the peace in the world.

The Best Place to Be

Only quotes this time, taken from the movie Chef and Apollo 13.

"...I'm, like, fucking lost."

"I think that's a good place to start."

- Carl and Molly in Chef

Television Reporter: Is there a specific instance in an airplane emergency when you can recall fear?

Jim Lovell: Uh well, I'll tell ya, I remember this one time - I'm in a Banshee at night in combat conditions, so there's no running lights on the carrier. It was the Shrangri-La, and we were in the Sea of Japan and my radar had jammed, and my homing signal was gone... because somebody in Japan was actually using the same frequency. And so it was - it was leading me away from where I was supposed to be. And I'm lookin' down at a big, black ocean, so I flip on my map light, and then suddenly: zap. Everything shorts out right there in my cockpit. All my instruments are gone. My lights are gone. And I can't even tell now what my altitude is. I know I'm running out of fuel, so I'm thinking about ditching in the ocean. And I, I look down there, and then in the darkness there's this uh, there's this green trail. It's like a long carpet that's just laid out right beneath me. And it was the algae, right? It was that phosphorescent stuff that gets churned up in the wake of a big ship. And it was - it was - it was leading me home. You know? If my cockpit lights hadn't shorted out, there's no way I'd ever been able to see that. So uh, you, uh, never know... what... what events are to transpire to get you home.

First Words of 2013

Do you remember the first words you say on new year? I usually don’t, but I remember mine last night, all thanks to the cat.

When the clock almost hit midnight last night, we were on a KFC spot on Kemang. She had this whole vow not to eat mammals and fowls but that day she was breaking it. I wasn’t hungry so I stayed outside while she was ordering food. The joint was festal and very loud because it’s in South Jakarta where even, I lie you not, fast food joints have their own sexy dancers. However, besides dancers, the KFC I was on also have this fireworks display going. That’s why I was outside, because I wanted to see it. And that’s why she was inside, because she’s scared of all the sound..., and of course because she wanted some poultry.

Anyway, the next day she asked me about my first word when the year turned. I was startled and couldn’t respond. “Well, I remember mine,” she said. She told me that right at midnight when people were screaming and counting down, she was instead yelling and ordering. Her first words were ‘upper thigh’. Not exactly profound words, I say. Of course, she meant them as a part of chicken she wanted but they’re actually not a far cry from the cat’s infamous sexual almost pornographic aura. So they still fit her perfectly. I then told her I still couldn’t remember mine, but at least my first words were with her because I didn’t talk to anyone else after the countdown. Laughing, she told me that in that case she knew what my first word was. It was a ‘no’, a simple ‘no’. It turns out that when I sat next to her, she offered me her food but I passed and said, “no”. Great, my word was even more superficial.

Well, I guess if first words in a new year were to describe how the year would turn out, then let’s just wish it would turn out with nays for regression and yays for upper thighs.
Especially if they are the cat’s. ;)

* Happy new year everyone!!!

What Are Clinical Pathologists? - A Second Year Resident's View -

In Indonesia, the laboratory can be described as a place occupied by three things: machines, analysts, and clinical pathologists. Machines are contraptions doing all the automated laboratory examinations, analysts are people operating the machines and performing the manual examinations, while clinical pathologists are medical doctors who click on the computer mouse. This unfunny role of clinical pathologists in the world of medicine has been a subject of ridicule and mockery. The machines are perfect and the analysts are experts, so why does the world of medicine require an extra person to authorize something that doesn’t need to be authorized? Even if some kind of authorization is needed, isn’t it best be done by the clinicians who treat and know the patients well, thus enabling them to directly compare the laboratory results with the real conditions?

It’s no wonder then to have a clinical pathologist’s protest in a seminar painfully dismissed by an internist. The protest was the fact that most clinicians do not include the patient’s diagnosis in the laboratory form, making it hard for clinical pathologists to produce a clinical interpretation. The dismissal was that a clinical pathologist’s interpretation was actually not needed at all. “We will make the interpretation ourselves,” said the internist sharply. Ouch... It seemed like there’s no use to have a clinical pathologist around.

Such notions proved to be personally troublesome, especially when I realized I had already enrolled in a school to be one. Bigger questions came up in mind. What are clinical pathologists really? What are they supposed to be doing? Is it true that they do not have a role at all in the world of medicine? And if they do, must they first be medical doctors?

I pondered as I went along. After about two years living in the environment, here are a couple of things I’ve noted from teachers, friends, and my own experience.